LIFE LIST UPDATE - No. 213: Eat octopus

Octopus nigiri sushi

I scratched another item off my "life list" last Thursday night when I ate octopus for the first time.

To celebrate my wife’s birthday, she and I went to eat at the Stix restaurant in Spanish Fort last Thursday, and I knew before I arrived that I’d probably find octopus on their menu. Sure enough, they offered octopus as part of their Nigiri sushi selections, and I ordered two as appetizers. They were $2.25 each.

(For those of you unfamiliar with Stix, it’s part of an outstanding chain of Japanese and Chinese sushi restaurants in the U.S. The one in Spanish Fort is located at 10240 Eastern Shore Blvd., and I highly recommend that you pay them a visit. You will not be disappointed.)

“Nigiri” literally means “hand-formed,” and this style of sushi consists of a rectangular cube of sushi rice with the topping draped over the top. Our waiter brought out the octopuses (octopi?) on two separate plates, and the raw octopus was bound to each cube of rice with a thin strip of green seaweed called “nori.” The waiter also supplied me with a small ball of wasabi sauce on the side.

I ate both pieces slowly, and it wasn’t bad. As you might have imagined, the octopus did have a fishy taste, but it wasn’t overpowering. The meat was also chewy and reminded me more of a thin fillet of chicken than of fish. At one point, I did apply a very small amount of wasabi sauce to a piece of the sushi, but I didn’t do it more than once. The taste of the wasabi overpowered the taste of the octopus and rendered it much too hot to enjoy.

And, yes, I did offer my wife a bite of octopus, but she declined. She also didn’t act disgusted by the fact that I was eating octopus for the first time, but she was definitely not interested in trying it for herself. While I munched away on my raw octopus, she busied herself with Facebook wisecracks about me having to make a late night trip to the local emergency room for food poisoning treatment.

It is hard to eat something like this without thinking about the dangers of food poisoning, so if you decide to try raw octopus for yourself, use caution. Even the Stix menu carries a warning about the risks you run when you consume uncooked meat. On the other side of the coin, that slight element of unpredictable "danger" does seem to add something a little bit extra to the whole experience.

While researching this life list item, I learned that octopus is eaten around the world, just not that often in South Alabama. It’s commonly eaten in Japan, Korea, Hawaii, Portugal, Tunisia and in the Mediterranean. It’s also a good source of vitamins and minerals, including vitamin B3, B12 and potassium.

In the end, I enjoyed crossing one more item off my life list. How many of you out there have ever tried octopus? What did you think about it? Did you like it or not? Have you tried it more than once? Do you plan on ever ordering it again? Let us know in the comments section below.